


ceasefire

by peeves



Series: mending [4]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: 5x12, Alternate Ending, It's a Fix-It fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 19:56:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3703561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peeves/pseuds/peeves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>anon put this into my inbox, and i turned it into a fic:<br/>The wall against his back is hard and uneven, the horizon a broken line of abandoned buildings. But the moon is bright in the sky, and Mickey is warm against his chest, snoring softly to hold back the silence. Ian wakes up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ceasefire

“Mick,” he whispers into Mickey’s hair. He nudges him with his chin, pulling him in closer with his arms. “Mick,” he tries again. 

“Mmmm,” Mickey murmurs, and even from the higher angle, Ian can see his eyebrows twitch, move up and down, and slowly open his eyes. His eyes. Ian can’t imagine a day where he gets sick of looking at those eyes. No matter what shade of the sky they reflect, nothing is comparable to how he feels when he looks in those eyes. 

“Where are we?” Mickey says groggily, and jolts backwards, further into Ian after he takes in his surroundings. “What happened?” Last he remembered, he was running. And then there were gunshots. He almost rolls his eyes as he thinks about this. Always damn gunshots. 

Ian’s chest starts to vibrate, first with muffled chuckling, and then with full out laughter. 

“What?” Mickey says again, more agitated. He can remember the gunshots. He can also remember the conversation before, and he doesn’t understand why he’s in the arms of the boy who broke his heart. He doesn’t move away, though. Even if this isn’t real, he doesn’t want it over yet. 

“You,” Ian says between laughs. “You hit your head on a pole?” Ian leans to the side, doubling over in his laughter. “You were running away from Sammi and you hit your head on a pole, got knocked out.” Ian’s laughter starts to die out. “Um, yeah.” 

“The fuck? How the fuck did I get here?” Mickey asked, still reluctant to move. It hurt. Not the bruise on his head he was beginning to feel, but being with Ian. Oh god, it hurt being so close to him, to feel his chest so solidly against his back. It fucking hurt. But the one thing that hurt more was the idea of leaving that warmth, that strength in those arms. 

Ian quieted down and leaned his head back against the wall. How did Mickey get here? Ian remembers walking into the house with Fiona and V. Ian remembers trudging up the stairs into his room. Ian remembers standing in the doorway of his room, staring at his bed. Thinking about the last time he was in that bed, when he couldn’t get it up. Thinking about the days before that, when he lay facing the wall, facing away from his phone that wouldn’t ring. Thinking about Mickey. And how at the end, he showed. He was late, but he showed. 

And Ian pushed him away anyways. Why? “We take care of each other.” That’s what Mickey said. And that’s what Monica said. But he didn’t want to be like Monica. 

Monica was what he needed at one point. Monica was the only person who understood. Still, the only person he knew that understood. And god, that was a relief, after so long, to be understood. But while he initially grabbed on to that understanding with his two hands, twisting it tightly, intertwining into his fingers and holding it close to his heart, willing it to cover him and submerge him into relief, he let it go. He moved past that point of needing Monica. He would always want to be understood, but what he understood the most clearly after that night under the stars was that he didn’t want to become Monica. He didn’t want to end up in a trailer in the middle of nowhere, making meth on the side. That wasn’t the life he wanted. 

And so he came back, and he called Mickey. He called his boyfriend, but when they spoke, Ian only heard what he didn’t want to hear. “We take care of each other.”  _Do we?_  he thought.  _You reminding me to take my pills, watching carefully after my every move. Is that us taking care of each other? No. It’s you taking care of me. You see me as someone that needs to be taken care of. You see me as someone who’s broken, who needs to be fixed. And I’m not_. 

He didn’t feel it when he said the words that confirmed they were over. He didn’t feel it when he saw Sammi running after Mickey with a gun in her hand. He didn’t feel it when he stood in his room, staring at his bed. But when he heard the gunshots, he jumped. His first and only thought was Mickey. Was Mickey shot? Was Mickey dead? Was Mickey gone? 

Was he about to live a life without Mickey? 

A selfish thought, sure, but Ian never claimed to be selfless. And the thought alone was scary enough to spur him into action, clambering down the stairs, out the door, down the street, running after Mickey. 

“Mickey??” he yelled, running. “Mickey!” He saw him lying on the ground. “Mickey, fuck!” He rushed over, crouched down, holding Mickey’s face in his hands the way he did the first time he saw Mickey get shot. Looking around wildly for Sammi, he only then noticed the cop cars, only then registered that the blonde was yelling, brandishing a gun as cops moved in to disarm her and shove her into the car. He turned his attention back to Mickey and looked for a gunshot wound, blood, anything to indicate what rendered Mickey unconscious. His hands moved to support the back of Mickey’s head when he felt it, sticky and wet. No. Did Sammi shoot Mickey in the head? No. No way. There would be way more blood if that’s the case, he told himself, scolding his heartbeat to slow the fuck down. Now was not the time to panic. 

Lifting his head again to survey his surroundings, he saw the pole, less than a few feet away. He saw the blood from the back of Mickey’s head. The blood was a lot lower than where Mickey’s head would be if he stood next to the pole. Ian could only imagine that Mickey had ducked when he was running, or twisted in some way to avoid the bullet, and ended up running into a pole. Amazing. Mickey Milkovich, brought down not by a gun, but a street pole. 

Ian didn’t let himself feel relieved, not yet. He checked all of Mickey’s vitals with the basic training he learned from ROTC–the memories blurry now, definitely, but his movements clinical and quick. Once he made sure Mickey was for the most part okay, he picked him up, and started walking. He laughed to himself, thinking about how Mickey would feel about being princess carried. 

They were at the dugouts. Where they last fucked, where they last kissed. Not where they last fought. But their break up was a different kind of fight, wasn’t it? Not the kind with blood and bruises, but with a different kind of violence that came in the form of throwing slurs in Mickey’s face when he basically promised him marriage. 

_“It’s just a piece of paper.” “Not to me.”_

“Ian?” Mickey says, elbowing him. “How the fuck did I get here?” he repeats. 

“Uh, I, uh…” Ian says, hesitantly. “I carried you here?” 

“Why here?” Mickey asks, almost bitterly. 

“Here’s…where it all started to go downhill, I guess.” 

“Bullshit.” The bitterness is clearer now. Mickey moves away, and Ian immediately misses the heat he provided. But he lets Mickey move away, gives him the space he seems to want, gives him the space he deserves. 

“Bullshit,” Mickey says again, now staggering to his feet, head still dizzy from the impact. “Here’s the last place you punched me in the face, called me a fucking  _faggot_ for trying to take care of you. Here’s the last place we fought until we were fucking covered in blood. Yeah?” Mickey says, eyebrows raised, lips folded. 

“You fucking–you fucking  _bastard_ ,” he spits out. He’s on a roll now, feeling the rage bubble inside of him, threatening to spill. “ _Fuck_  you. FUCK. YOU. I came out for you. I fucking went through hell and back, for what? To have my fucking piece of shit father’s words thrown into my face? To be punished? FUCK YOU,” he yells, clenching his hands into fists. He wants to punch something. He wants to make Ian feel what he felt. But he forces himself to take a step back, glaring at Ian’s solemn face. 

“Is that what I deserve?” he asks, voice breaking. He turned away, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes to force back the tears that had yet to come, missing the way Ian’s quiet resolve cracked. 

“No. No, fuck, no,” Ian says, standing up now. “No. I fucked up. I’m sorry. I really, really fucked up.”  _There’s too much wrong with me_. 

_There’s too much wrong with me._

_There’s too much wrong with me._

“Do you…” he hesitates, knowing how selfish he sounds. Knowing how selfish he feels. “Do you still want me?” 

Mickey turns around, incredulous. What kind of fucking question was that? Did Ian still need reassurance after every fucking thing Mickey went through for him? Staring back at him, he realizes yes. Ian did still need reassurance. 

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” he bites out, and turned away again. 

Relief. Ian feels relieved. 

“I love you,” he says quietly. 

Mickey freezes, hating the part of him that responds to those words. Wondering when the last time was that he heard those words. He felt it, sure, with Ian. Before everything went to shit. Even after everything went to shit. He felt it in the way Ian breathed in relief when Mickey showed up in his room. He felt it in the way Ian put his hand on his knee at the clinic. He felt it minutes earlier in the way Ian held him in his arms. 

“I uh…I know I fucked up. I’m sorry. I…” Ian doesn’t know what to say to make it better. But he holds onto the relief and the security Mickey gave him by answering his question, and he rambles on. “I want to make this work. This. Us. I love you. I fucked up. I’m sorry. I know that’s probably not enough, but I’m sorry. I’ll try to make it up to you. I love you.” 

Mickey hates the tremor he hears in Ian’s voice, hates that there’s so much shit to sort through, hates that he let that shit pile up until they were stuck in this mess. Hates that Ian doesn’t seem to know that there’s no way Mickey would say no. 

“Okay,” he says simply, turning back around. “We’ll figure something out.” He moves slowly towards the one person in this world that had all the power to hurt him and love him and used both, every day. He slightly tip-toes, and reaches out to hug Ian. Ian responds, slowly wrapping his arm around the shorter boy’s torso. Then he grips tightly, holds him tightly, chest constricted tightly. 

It’s not enough, he knows. There’s still a lot to figure out. There’s a lot to talk about, and they need to do that, for fucking once. But right now, he lets himself feel safe and secure. He lets himself feel relieved. And even though Mickey didn’t say it back this time, he lets himself feel loved by the boy he loves. He burrows his face into Mickey’s neck and inhales, letting himself fall in love. 

Mickey couldn’t control how fast his heart was beating, or how his entire body was shaking. But amidst the pounding of his heart he felt a warmth, stuck in between the two bodies pressed to each other.  _Is this what love feels like?_  he thought to himself.  _Maybe._  He held on tighter.  _Maybe._

**Author's Note:**

> Hope this helped, even if only a bit. (peeves.tumblr.com) 
> 
> This is the first part of my series, "healing". I don't know what the show is going to do, but I know it's not going to be good. For both practical and impractical reasons, the show won't spend the time needed on these two to get them back together to a good place, leaving both characters intact. But that's okay. I will.


End file.
